Master The Tedious Before Mastering The Flow

Practicing an instrument is tedious and boring most of the times. Writing is difficult. But as we’re dragging ourselves trough these activities, brief bouts of brilliance emerge all of a sudden. Although they seem like it, these flashes of brilliance aren’t just random. They are a window trough which we can catch a glimpse of our true potential.

In order to discover the things that naturally flow to you, the things that you are mining for in the cold, dark days and make you feel you’ve struck gold when they hit you all of a sudden, you have to put yourself in the position where they can actually happen. Let me explain.

Let’s say you are in a position where you’ve been struggling for hours trying to find the right words for your story. It’s super painful and frustrating and no good ideas are coming to your head. But all of a sudden the magic words seem to just come to you.

Or maybe you’re playing around on the piano, trying to improvise something and you’re not really coming up with anything good. But then all of a sudden you try something new and you somehow pull off a brilliant new melody. It’s like genius struck for a brief moment and then faded from existence.

Moments like these, moments of flow, seem to fall upon us kind of randomly and without warning. While we’re in them, it’s almost euphoric. Things start making sense, they click together like the pieces of a puzzle.

If we’re able to fully develop this power of replicating these moments of flow by constantly doing our tedious crafts, it can give us a greater command over ourselves, over others and over the world around us.